#192| How Self-Compassion Help You Ditch Overwhelm: Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing

Do you ever catch yourself saying things like “I should have this figured out by now” or “I’m just terrible at this”? What if those thoughts are the real reason you’re feeling so drained and overwhelmed?

In this episode, Michelle reveals how negative self-talk quietly magnifies stress for working women and keeps them trapped in a cycle of exhaustion and guilt. You’ll discover what self-compassion actually means—and why it’s not indulgent or lazy, but the foundation of real emotional resilience and calm productivity.

In this episode, you will:

• Learn a simple three-step framework (mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness) to interrupt negative self-talk in the moment.
• Understand how treating yourself like a trusted friend shifts your mindset and restores confidence.
• Discover how small changes in your inner dialogue can dramatically lighten your stress and help you show up more fully—at work and at home.

Press play now to learn how to silence your inner critic, build emotional resilience, and finally give yourself the compassion you deserve.

Featured on the podcast
People Pleasing Purge Course

Wondering why you're overwhelmed? Take my "why am I overwhelmed" quiz to find out the source of your overwhelm, and what to do about it.

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Life can be overwhelming, but on this podcast, you'll discover practical strategies to overcome overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and negative self-talk, manage time effectively, set boundaries, and stay productive in high-stress jobs—all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the Overwhelmed Worki...

Chapters

• 0:41 Our Brains Can Be Mean
• 2:53 Defining Self-Compassion
• 5:24 Approaching Negative Self-Talk with Mindfulness
• 6:22 Common Humanity
• 7:20 How Would You Talk to a Friend?

Transcript

Michelle Gauthier: 0:00

If you're already stressed and overwhelmed, adding that extra layer of negative self-talk just like doubles down on the badness of the situation. You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less. I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach. On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences. And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.

Michelle Gauthier: 0:40

Hi, friend. Sometimes when you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, or maybe even when you're not, when you're just hanging out, does your brain ever serve up some real mean thoughts about you? It might sound like, what's wrong with me? Or I should be able to handle this better, or I should have this figured out by now, or I'm a terrible mom, whatever it is.

Michelle Gauthier: 1:01

First of all, you're not alone. Everybody has these thoughts. Our brains just drop in some mean thoughts sometimes. But the trouble is, if you're already stressed and overwhelmed, adding that extra layer of negative self-talk just like doubles down on the badness of the situation. Sometimes the real suffering is not even the circumstance, like whatever it is that's making you feel stressed out, but that negative self-talk can even weigh more heavily and be worse. So if you're like, okay, sounds good, I hear what you're saying. How am I supposed to magically stop being so hard on myself? You're in the right place. When you listen to this episode today, you'll learn what self-compassion actually means and how it builds real emotional resilience. And then I'll give you two quick ways to get yourself out of that negative self-talk loop when it happens to you.

Michelle Gauthier: 1:53

Before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to tell you that I have been working very hard behind the scenes on a new offer, which is a class called People Pleasing Purge. Kind of hard to say. People pleasing purge. And eventually this class will be video only to watch at your own pace. But for the first round, I'm going to be teaching it live and doing live coaching throughout as you're learning how to stop people pleasing. So if you are a person who says yes when you want to say no or has a schedule that's just full of stuff that you don't even want to do, but somehow has appeared on your calendar, or you always do whatever your mother-in-law says, even when you don't feel like it, come and join my class. I'm going to open registration next week. But if you're a podcast listener, you can register right now. I will put the link in the show notes. It has all the information. It starts on November 3rd.

Michelle Gauthier: 2:50

Okay, back to self-compassion. So let's get into what self-compassion is. First, let's just start with compassion. The word compassion. If you break it down, the C O M part means with and passion in this case means suffering. So compassion is with suffering. Let's take an example. If you have a friend who's going through a really hard time and you are compassionate, you are with their suffering. So you are with them in their suffering. You are not making their suffering worse. You are with them in their suffering. And I'm betting that you probably are a compassionate person. I bet you're great at taking care of other people and great at being compassionate to them. So now let's turn it around to self-compassion. It's essentially taking those very same skills and turning them to yourself to give yourself self-kindness in situations where you're the one who needs the compassion. There's a researcher whose work I absolutely love, and I have modeled a lot of the things that I do in coaching after what I've learned from her. Her name's Dr. Kristen Neff, and she's a leading researcher on self-compassion. And she's she puts it really simply. She says, It really means just treating yourself the way you treat someone else who you love when they're struggling. If you had a friend who comes to you, let's say you're at work and your work friend comes up to you and is almost in tears and said, Oh my gosh, I just had the worst presentation. I totally screwed it up. I don't think I can do this job. I should just quit. Would you say, Yeah, you're right. You probably did it up. You should probably just quit. No, of course you wouldn't. You'd be like, oh my gosh, you're allowed to mess up. It probably wasn't as bad as you thought it was. This one thing doesn't define you. Let's go get a diet coke and figure out how to move forward. Imagine if you could turn that level of just natural kindness, because I'm betting in a regular situation, that's exactly what you do. Different words, different suggestions, but same kind of thing. Imagine if you could do that for yourself, how much better you could feel. So if you feel like your brain offers some pretty mean thoughts and offers them pretty regularly, if you start paying attention to it after hearing this podcast, and you start noticing when your brain throws out some unkind thoughts, you may be surprised with how many negative thoughts are coming to mind about yourself. Remember, you can't control those. You can't control what's coming into your mind and just notice them without judgment. And here are the three things that you can do to turn that around.

Michelle Gauthier: 5:23

Number one is mindfulness, one of our favorite things to talk about on this podcast. So just simply noticing it, noticing what you're actually upset about, and then what the negative self-talk is that is on top of that. So, for example, if you're having a really hard day at work and you're having a really hard day at work and you're like, I can't believe this job sucks so bad. Anybody else would have gotten a different job by now. You're terrible at this job. This makes you terrible at home at night because you're in a bad mood, etc. Just if you were to take the approach that from a mindful perspective, if you were to just narrate that situation from the outside, this is the way that you would handle it with mindfulness. You would say, I'm feeling overwhelmed with work today, and my brain is offering a lot of negative thoughts about me as a person. Okay, so that's step one mindfulness. Just describe to yourself what is happening without judgment.

Michelle Gauthier: 6:21

Then the next thing you do is something that Kristen Neff calls common humanity. So when you're suffering like this, it's really easy to feel like you're the only one. For some reason, and I talked about this last week, we did two episodes on comparison last week, but there's just something about feeling bad about yourself that makes you feel so alone, like you're the only one. So after you've done the mindfulness step and acknowledged I'm feeling overloaded with work today, my brain is offering a lot of negative thoughts about myself. Use the power of common humanity to tell yourself, I'm not the only one. All humans struggle, all humans get overwhelmed, all humans mess up, other people feel this way too. This is part of being human. I'm not the only one going through this. The person sitting in the office next to me could very well feel like this. Whatever it is, just consciously connect yourself to the rest of the world, knowing that you're not alone in the way that you're feeling in that moment.

Michelle Gauthier: 7:17

And then the third step is to talk to yourself like you'd talk to a friend. The way I often phrase it to my clients is if your best friend were going through this exact situation, what would you say to her? And when I ask myself that question, I will literally picture my friend and picture her being so sad and upset and think what I would say to her, which is, oh my gosh, that sounds really hard. I can see why you're upset. Everything's gonna be okay. What do you need right now? Do you want to talk about it? I think you're doing the best you can with what you have right now. So it's not about lying to yourself or like toxic positively positivity, everything is great, everything is amazing. It's really just about giving yourself the same grace that you give to other people and letting that kindness carry you forward so that you can solve the actual problem. Because remember in the example I gave, you're just feeling overloaded with work. But what's really weighing you down is the negative thoughts about it. So if you can remove those and be with yourself in your suffering and non-judgmental of yourself, then you can solve the actual problem. If you want to go a little deeper on this, you could try doing a journaling exercise and think of a time when a close friend of yours was really struggling. What did you say to her or him? What was your tone? How did you support them? And then think of a time when you were struggling. What did you say to yourself? What was your tone? How did you treat yourself? And then notice what differences there are between those two and see if you can model the way that you treated your friend when you need to treat yourself that way.

Michelle Gauthier: 8:54

So remember, when you notice that you're having negative thoughts, the things to practice are mindfulness. Narrate what's happening, how you're feeling, what you're thinking without judgment. Remind yourself of common humanity. Everybody feels this way sometimes. And then speak to yourself with kindness. Maybe you should send this episode to your best friend and say, hey, I just listened to this episode and I'm going to try to treat myself like I would treat you if you were having a bad day. Do you want to try this with me? And maybe together you guys can work on having better self talk. That's it for today. Have a great week. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com. See you next week.